Antwerp to celebrate Ensor Year with four simultaneous exhibitions

Seventy-five years after the death of artist James Ensor, Antwerp will celebrate Ensor Year with four simultaneous exhibitions in September.

The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) will hold a large retrospective and the Museum Plantin-Moretus will show Ensor’s experiments with etching techniques. The Photo Museum Antwerp (FoMu) will highlight the link with photographer Cindy Sherman, while the Fashion Museum Antwerp (MoMu) will focus on make-up and beauty.

The KMSKA has the largest Ensor collection in the world, which it will be showing off this year. The retrospective In Your Wildest Dreams: Ensor Beyond Impressionism not only dives into Ensor's universe of wild visions, masks and satire.

It also presents Ensor for the first time side by side with contemporaries such as Monet, Manet and Munch. The exhibition follows Ensor's development as an artist and shows that he was not just a local genius, but a game-changer who broke the rules of art and went on to radically rewrite them.

Website preview
Ostend will dedicate 2024 to artist James Ensor with new exhibitions
Ostend will dedicate 2024 to painter James Ensor by celebrating his life and works. The festivities started early as the exhibition Rose, Rose...
belganewsagency.eu

At the Museum Plantin-Moretus, dedicated to the history of printing, States of Imagination will show how Ensor experimented with etching techniques in his younger days. For the first time, the exhibition brings together the most remarkable results of these experiments: preparatory drawings, copper plates and prints in a variety of states. Ensor transformed prints into unique artworks by colouring them in by hand in pencil, gouache or watercolour.

FoMu and MoMu will not exhibit works by Ensor himself but will highlight his influence on later art. In Cindy Sherman: Anti-fashion, FoMu will translate issues from Ensor's oeuvre into the contemporary photography of American photographer Sherman. Like Ensor, Sherman is known for her critical and ironic commentary on social conventions through masquerades and poses questions about identity, gender and stereotyping. This is her first retrospective in Belgium.

Finally, MoMu will let make-up and hair artists catapult Ensor into the 21st century with the multimedia exhibition Masquerade, Makeup & Ensor. The artists explore Ensor's ideas around masquerade, coquetry, seduction, deception and the artificial and ephemeral. They delve into themes such as the representation of women, physical and digital facial filters, distorted body images and the ritual of makeup, exploring whether makeup is a mask or a means of expression.

While these exhibitions in Antwerp start on 28 September, there are already several exhibitions running in Ostend and Brussels as part of the Ensor Year.

 

#FlandersNewsService | A self portrait by James Ensor © BELGA PHOTO JONAS ROOSENS


Related news

Website preview
Video game immerses players in James Ensor's paintings
A new video game about the work of artist James Ensor was presented at the Ensor House museum in Ostend on Saturday. Brussels-based game designer...
belganewsagency.eu
Website preview
Flanders buys Ensor painting for 3.75 million euros
The Flemish Community has acquired 'The Virgin of Consolation' by James Ensor for 3.75 million euros. It is currently on display at the MAS in...
belganewsagency.eu

Get updates in your mailbox

By clicking "Subscribe" I confirm I have read and agree to the Privacy Policy.

About belganewsagency.eu

Belga News Agency delivers dependable, rapid and high-quality information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from Belgium and abroad to all Belgian media. The information covers all sectors, from politics, economics and finance to social affairs, sports and culture, not to mention entertainment and lifestyle.

Every day, our journalists and press photographers produce hundreds of photos and news stories, dozens of online information items, plus audio and video bulletins, all in both national languages. Since the end of March 2022 English has been added as a language.

For public institutions, businesses and various organisations that need reliable information, Belga News Agency also offers a comprehensive range of corporate services to meet all their communication needs.

Contact

Arduinkaai 29 1000 Brussels

www.belganewsagency.eu